


the earth around me

by casfallsinlove



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, BFFs, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Road Trips, Runaway Castiel, Runaway Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 12:54:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4101712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casfallsinlove/pseuds/casfallsinlove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m running away,” Dean blurts and fuck, it feels good to say that out loud.</p>
<p>Cas blinks at him over a box of cod liver oil. He plants it unceremoniously on the floor and pulls off his creased Walgreens apron.</p>
<p>“I’m coming with you.”</p>
<p>Okay then.</p>
<p>
  <em>(In which Dean and Cas run away together and learn how to be free.)</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	the earth around me

**Author's Note:**

> i finished a thing??? miracle tbh

“I’m running away,” Dean blurts and fuck, it feels good to say that out loud.

Cas blinks at him over a box of cod liver oil. He plants it unceremoniously on the floor and pulls off his creased Walgreens apron.

“I’m coming with you.”

Okay then.

 

-

 

They head out west a day later with duffel bags of essentials slung in the trunk and the summer sun warming their faces through the windshield. They roll down the windows once they’re on the freeway and let the breeze whip at their hair.

Cas, shirt sleeves tugged up around his elbows and arm hanging out of the car, mouths along tunelessly to Dean’s classic rock.

“And you just said a great big fuck you to Michael? You?” Dean asks for the hundredth time since Cas got in the Impala and demanded he _drive, Dean, right now_ , because he still doesn’t quite believe it.

The pale stretch of Cas’s throat, exposed where his head is tipped back against the seat, vibrates around a hum. “And flipped him the bird, too.”

“Castiel Novak, you rebel.”

Dean doesn’t have any family to leave behind anymore since his dad took off without a word six months ago, but he can’t imagine any scenario where he could have told his father to shove it when he _was_ around and lived to tell the tale.

“How about here?” Cas asks, eyes bright and alert. Dean takes a sharp right, little stones pinging up at the Impala’s belly as they go off-road, a dusty cloud churned up behind them. The landscape around them is vast and sprawling. Grassy plains roll out in all directions, gold and green under the pink evening sky. Cas grabs his camera, his favorite classic Leica, and jumps from the car. Dean follows, vaguely worried about chips in his paintwork until Cas reels him in with a strong arm around his shoulders. They stand there side-by-side in the boondocks of Kansas and the sun is beating down on the back of their necks and Cas’s waist is warm under his palm and Dean pulls a stupid face as Cas holds the camera up, pointed towards them.

“Day one of forever,” Cas smiles, and the shutter clicks.

 

-

 

“Did you know, this fat-free strawberry yogurt contains more sugar than a Twinkie?”

Dean looks over at Cas, who’s frowning around a plastic spoon at the yogurt in his hand.

“Y’know, Cas, I can’t say that I did.”

“This is false advertising, Dean. These yogurts are presented as healthy snacks but in reality all they’re doing is giving people diabetes.”

Dean gasps. “Quick, alert the Congress.”

Cas shoots him an impatient glare. “You know what else contains obscene amounts of sugar? Pie.” He looks pointedly at the region of Dean’s stomach and Dean places a hand over his belly self-consciously.

“Hey, don’t try and get between a man and his pie, dude. Not cool.”

Cas sighs, settling back into his seat. “Where even are we?”

The road ahead of them seems infinite in the low light of dusk, nothing but the glowing taillights of the other cars in front and the endless dark fields to keep them company. “Not a fucking clue,” Dean snorts.

A few taps later and Cas is waving his iPhone in Dean’s face and saying, “There’s a motel in two miles if you take a left at the next intersection.”

“A motel?”

“Well I’m not sleeping in the car,” he scoffs, and shit, Dean didn’t think about paying to sleep somewhere. Or any expenses. Like, at all. He’s got maybe $500 in his bank account. Even if they bunk up in the cheapest rooms available, that’s not gonna last forever.

“Stop panicking.” Cas’s eyes are burning holes into the side of his face.

Dean, white-knuckling the wheel, says, “What? I’m not panicking. You’re panicking. Shut up.”

“Dean, in case you had forgotten, I happen to be a spoiled trust-fund kid with a lot of money.”

“Kid,” Dean huffs, “You’re 23.” He chooses to ignore everything else in that sentence. The fact that Cas has money, or his family does, has been a bone of contention since they were old enough to know what it meant. Not that Cas actually behaves like a spoiled trust-fund kid. If he did well in school he was given a hundred bucks rather than a hug or a pat on the back and having a CEO for a father meant that there was never enough time to attend Cas’s baseball games or high school graduation or debut photography exhibition. So it’s pretty fair to say that he actively resents his dad and older brother and hasn’t touched his trust fund since it legally became his when he turned 21. “’Sides, you always said you were savin’ that money.”

“I always said I’d use it to get away from Michael and my father. That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it? I can’t think of anything I’d rather spend it on than this. Me and you.” Cas says all this very matter of fact, like he hasn’t just sent Dean’s heart somersaulting behind his ribs.

“All right. Okay. Fine,” he manages, and takes the left.

 

-

 

So there’s the road, and there’s a lot of greasy diner food, and there’s stopping to take photos of whatever the fuck Cas feels like taking photos of. A family of ducks by a lake and tall reedy wildflowers and an abandoned gas station and a polaroid of Dean in his pajamas leaning against the outside wall of their motel room drinking coffee from a chipped mug that he won’t let Dean throw in the trash.

There’s also Nebraska, which is flat and dry until Cas finds a tiny museum on his phone (Dean’s gonna toss that thing out the window first chance he gets) that’s only a couple miles from their current motel that he wants to check out.

“Why,” Dean asks as he pays the four dollar entrance fee— _four dollars_ , like he’s made of fucking money—to the old lady behind the counter who’s looking at him suspiciously like he might steal something the second her back is turned.

“It’s interesting,” Cas says for the twentieth time, patient always when it comes to Dean’s whining. Jesus, Dean doesn’t deserve him. He vows to shut his trap, at least for an hour or so.

He lags behind a little, more than happy to watch Cas serenely zigzag from exhibit to exhibit, reading every sign with a little pinch between his eyebrows like he’s going to be quizzed on it later. Cas lives for this sort of shit. It reminds Dean of Sam and he pulls out his phone and snaps a picture of a bunch of mammoth fossils that he sends to his brother with the caption “geekin’ it up”. Sam replies straightaway with an emoji of a tearful smiley face, and seriously, what a loser.

He laughs at the next exhibit, a model honeycomb with a giant plastic bee glued to the front. Go figure. “Hey, nerdstiel,” he calls and Cas’s head snaps up—god what a dork, Dean loves him so much—“apparently Nebraska’s state insect is the honeybee.”

“Oh.” Cas walks over to him, eyes wide, “I like bees.” He stands close for a second, eyes soft as they flit over Dean’s face and the unspoken thing between them blossoms tentatively.

Dean elbows him gently in the ribs. “Yeah, doofus, I know.”

The rest of the museum is pretty dull but at the end Dean buys a 3D knitted honeybee button from the gift shop that he pins to Cas’s jacket and Cas just lets him, smiling like a dweeb the whole time.

Cas is out like a light that night, but Dean stays awake for a long time thinking about that smile.

 

-

 

After Nebraska there’s Wyoming where Cas decides they most definitely have to visit Yellowstone which sends Dean tail-spinning into very real but very quiet dread. What, he saw a supervolcano thing on the Discovery Channel once and that shit did not end good, okay. Also: bears. He’s way too young to die. He hasn’t even told Cas he loves him yet. Hasn’t kissed him behind the ear, or watched him wake up, or spooned him to sleep. He’s not ready to get eaten by bears.

“You’re being ridiculous,” Cas scoffs when Dean tells him this last part but he calls ahead and books them both a cabin at a fancy lodge in the heart of the park so Dean _thinks_ Cas is only messing with him when they stop at a Walmart for supplies and he starts looking interestedly at the tents and camping gear.

“No, never, no way, nuh uh,” Dean says, just in case, and drags him away by the hand until they get to the shaving foam they actually came in here for.

The cabin turns out to be really friggin’ nice, all deep reds and browns with a mini kitchen and two kingsize beds. There’s no skeevy motel smell, no rattling A/C. Just the soothing scent of pine and laundry detergent and soft-as-clouds mattresses.

“This is the life,” Dean sighs, starfishing across the nearest one. His butt aches from all the driving and he’s got the worst case of dry mouth since last weekend’s hangover. He deserves a three-hour nap, at least.

Cas whacks him in the foot just as he’s on the brink of sleep and says, “You could at least take your shoes off.”

“I could,” Dean agrees, and promptly blacks out.

 

 

Yellowstone’s really beautiful and everything but it smells like farts. It’s July and it’s hot and it stinks like rotten eggs. They spend over an hour sitting on a bench waiting for Old Faithful to erupt. Cas has his camera poised and ready to go. Dean is playing Candy Crush on his phone and trying not to think about lunch even though his stomach is growling at him. The hike to get here from their cabin has left him embarrassingly worn out and he’s drained both his and Cas’s water bottles.

“Dean, there’s something I’m struggling to understand.”

“Huh?” Dean looks at Cas and Cas is still watching the geyser but he’s got that squint thing going on that means he’s thinking really hard about something.

“We’ve been on the road for over a week now and you still haven’t told me what you want to do.”

Ha. Like fuck Dean knows the answer to that. Old Faithful erupts and provides a momentary distraction that yeah, okay, is kinda cool, like a water volcano and Dean briefly entertains the idea of what it would be like to sit on top of it with a surfboard—and Cas’s camera clicks over and over but then it’s done and Cas is staring at him again.

“I guess... I wanna do all the stuff I could never do ‘cause of my dad, y’know?” he admits, because his dad was oppressive and angry and drunk on his best days and violent and mean on his worst.

Cas gets it. Cas has been patching him up since Dean first climbed through his bedroom window in the middle of the night with a busted lip when they were fifteen. He makes a thoughtful little pout with his mouth, hands clutching the bench either side of his knees. “Like what?”

Dean laughs, hollow. “I dunno, man, I ain’t exactly got a bucket list.”

“Ten bucks says you do,” Cas smiles, and shit, maybe he knows Dean too goddamn well. But still, John Winchester is out there somewhere and he’s bound to drop back into Dean’s life eventually because he always does so maybe it’s a little too soon to be making any big decisions. Running away was step one, Dean doesn’t really know what’s supposed to come next.

“I do know I’m fucking starvin’, can we go eat now?”

Cas lets him change the subject, because he’s awesome like that, and starts packing up his tripod. But Dean thinks about what he said, thinks about it as they find a cafeteria and order burgers until he blurts, “I want to get a tattoo.”

Grinning at him across the table, Cas says, “All right, we can start there.”

 

-

 

John Winchester never actually said no to Dean getting inked and it’s not like Dean couldn’t have gone out the second he turned eighteen and gotten one himself, but then there was the risk Dad would see it and Dean always tried to avoid giving him any more ammunition than he already had.

He tells this to Cas later that night and Cas looks at him curiously across the gap between their beds. “Are you going to be one of those guys who tattoos a penis on his body?”

“What?” he splutters, choking on a laugh, “No! There are people who do that?” Cas shrugs and Dean snorts, adding, “It’s not like explicit or anything. Just. My mom. She used to have this bracelet with a pentagram inside a circle of flames? Thought it’d be cool to get it right here.”

He taps the left side of his chest, right over his heart. Cas’s face softens in the lamplight, his eyes bright and warm like Dean’s just told him he saves puppies in his spare time, which is dumb because it's not like Dean does that but that's still how Cas is looking at him. Jesus. Why. “I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

“Dad wouldn’t.” Dean already looks too much like Mom, has her eyes and her smile and her freckles. Dean probably wouldn’t want a living breathing walking reminder of his dead wife either.

“Your dad is an ass,” Cas huffs.

“So’s yours, so I guess we’re pretty well matched.” Dean catches the flicker of a smile on Cas’s lips as he hums in agreement, and his face prickles hotly so he rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling instead.

 

 

Cas’s damnable iPhone apparently tells him there's a “highly commended” tattoo parlor in Idaho Falls according to Yelp, so they check out of their cabin after a fucking delightful breakfast where Dean stuffed his face until he felt sick and head south. While Dean drives Cas gets a notebook out of his bag and starts drawing. Dean doesn't ask until the sound of sharpie on paper becomes so grating that it starts to set his teeth on edge.

“Whatcha doing?”

Cas holds up the notebook. The page is covered in unfamiliar symbols, weird curvy glyphs in thick black marker.

“It's Enochian,” Cas says, then must catch sight of Dean’s nonplussed face because he explains, “The language of angels.”

Huh. Figures Cas would know a friggin’ ancient language off by heart, even if he is named after one of the things that supposedly spoke it.

“All right, what's it say?”

“It's traditionally a ward to protect, but I've embellished it with a prayer about always finding your way home.”

Which is really ironic seeing as they don't technically have a home at the moment. Still, Dean can appreciate the sentiment. And maybe they can make a new home, somewhere along the way. He kinda thinks he'd like that.

“I'm thinking right here,” Cas continues. He rips the sheet of paper out, layering it over his ribs.

Dean stares at him. “What?”

“You didn't think I was going to let you get a tattoo without me, did you?”

The thing is, Dean knows Cas is it for him. Knows it in his bones, feels it rooted in the easy spaces between them. Sometimes he thinks Cas might know it too, but it’s not something they talk about. It just is. Except this is one of those moments where Dean just wants to lean over and kiss the ever-loving fuck outta him.

“Will you, uh, will you draw mine for me too?” he asks.

Cas flips the notebook to a clean page. “Sure,” he smiles, “Describe it to me.”

 

-

 

Idaho Falls is hot and dry but the tattoo parlor is mercifully air-conditioned and the girl who greets them when they walk in has _live long and prosper_ tattooed on her arm which makes her pretty cool as far as Dean’s concerned.

“Hey, fellas,” she beams, tucking her red hair behind her ear, “I’m Charlie, you got an appointment?”

“Castiel Novak, we spoke on the phone,” Cas says, and while he’s busy Dean wanders over to have a look at the art on the walls. Some of the designs are incredible, huge and intricate and bursting with color. He takes the plain black sketch of his tattoo Cas made him out of his pocket and looks at it a while. Seems kinda lame in comparison.

“It’s not about how impressive it is, it’s about what it means to you,” says a voice from beside him. A woman with long dark hair and a purple leather jacket, who looks like she’s parked her bike out back and could eat Dean for breakfast, has her eyebrows raised at him pointedly.

“Excuse me?”

She rolls her eyes and taps the paper in his hand. “This is important to you, right? It means something?”

“Means a lot,” Dean nods, and he can remember the way his mom used to spin the bracelet around her wrist when she was nervous, the way the silver would catch the sun and bounce into his eyes.

“Well then,” the woman snorts, “who cares what it looks like? The guys with tattoos like that?” She points to a huge flaming skull, big enough to cover a grown man’s entire back, “Definitely overcompensating for the size of their dicks.”

Dean laughs even though he’s not sure he’s supposed to and when Charlie and Cas join them Cas stands close to Dean and his hand twitches in this abortive little movement that Dean isn’t really sure what to make of.

“Guys, this is Meg,” Charlie says, “She’s the best at lettering we got, so she’ll be doing you, Castiel.”

“Mm, my pleasure,” Meg smirks and Dean manfully keeps a straight face when Cas shoots him a wide-eyed look of apprehension.

“Dean, you’re with me.”

Charlie’s awesome. She talks to Dean about Star Trek versus Star Wars and tells him about her LARPing community and teases him about upcoming Game of Thrones plots in the books he hasn’t gotten around to reading yet. Dean doesn’t even notice the sting of the needle as he gets pretty heavily invested in his meta about Ned Stark.

Dean’s tattoo is done first and he’s been bandaged and paid and had a lesson in tattoo aftercare by the time Meg announces Cas can put his shirt back on. It’s sort of a relief, because seeing Cas’s stomach muscles jumping under Meg’s gloved hand for the past hour or so has left Dean with an ache right between his eyes.

“Any regrets?” Dean asks on their way back to the car. Their elbows bump as they walk and Cas is wincing as he stretches his t-shirt away from his abdomen.

“Not yet. Meg was a very talented artist.”

“Uh huh,” Dean says carefully and Cas shoots him a _look_.

“You don’t need to be jealous, Dean,” he says, wryly, and Dean balks because what. Like. _What_.

“Why would I be—that’s—God. Get in the damn car,” he barks, and doesn’t look Cas in the eye the whole way back to the motel.

 

-

 

There’s a roadside diner in a non-descript town in the sticks of Idaho that’s pale blue and dirty white and decorated with shells and boat pictures like it belongs on the beach not nestled among forest and mountains and suddenly Dean knows where he wants to go next.

“Let’s head west,” he suggests, and Cas’s eyes meet his over the rim of his Coke glass. Dean continues, “We’re ‘bout fifteen miles outta Boise? From there it’s a straight seven-hour shot through to Portland. We’ll get on Route 101 and head down the coast.”

“I do like Oregon,” Cas agrees, “and it would be nice to see the ocean again.”

And just like that they have a plan.

 

 

 

The rain begins as they’re crossing the border into Oregon and only gets worse as they pass through Portland until it’s practically a monsoon. The Impala is trying her hardest to sluice through it but visibility is shit and Dean’s been fishtailing down the North Coast Highway for the past hour.

“Yeah, okay, I’m calling it,” he says when he sees a shabby little motel, neon sign flickering feebly in the gloom. It’s only eight-thirty and the motel is pay-by-the-hour and the ocean is roaring violently literally a hundred yards away but what the fuck ever. His dream of driving down the coast with the windows down and his sunglasses on has been shot all to hell. Stupid Pacific Northwest, what was he thinking.

“We should have aimed for California,” Cas grumbles, as if he’s reading Dean’s mind. He’s bundled up in not only his own sweater but Dean’s yellow hoodie, sleeves pulled over his hands.

“Believe me, first thing in the A.M. we’re goin’ south,” Dean assures him, disgruntled and fed up with everything about this day. He parks as close as he can to the motel reception and leaves Cas to mope in the car while he runs inside to book a room. The spotty teenager behind the counter doesn’t even look up from his phone until Dean clears his throat, even though he’s dripping all over their threadbare carpet.

“One room, two beds,” he says, swiping the water from his face.

The kid sighs as if Dean’s request is the most difficult thing he’s had to do all day, clacks at the ancient computer keys for a minute, then says, “None left.”

Dean waits for an alternative suggestion and when nothing is forthcoming grits out, “What about two rooms with one bed?”

“Nope.”

Oh for the love of— “Well then what _have_ you got?”

Which is how he and Cas end up like drowned rats in a room with a king bed arguing over who should get to take a shower first. Cas wins—of course he does, Dean can’t ever say fucking no to him—and so he sulks and watches the TV crackle in and out of static for fifteen minutes. It’s a goddamn relief when his phone rings on the nightstand.

“Bobby?” he frowns, “not that I don’t love the sound of your gruff and surly tones, but I only said goodbye like a week ago—”

“Dean, it’s your dad,” Bobby’s voice tells him everything before he even finishes his sentence, “He’s passed away.”

Dean’s low mood plummets further, landing somewhere near his feet, leaving him feeling empty and hollow. “Good,” he spits out, the word sharp on his tongue.

“Dean...” But Bobby knows, knows the shit Dean went through just as well as Cas knows. It was Bobby who went to parent-teacher conferences and Dean’s high school graduation. He’s been filling John’s shoes for so long Dean’s forgotten what they used to look like on his actual dad.

“How’d it happen?” Dean asks because he’s gotta know which of the hundred nasty scenarios swirling around his head is the real one.

Bobby sighs heavily, “Wrapped his truck around a pole, drunk as a skunk.”

Yep, that was one of Dean’s top ten. “Was anyone else hurt?”

“Nah, don’t think so. Jody’s the one dealin’ with it. She thought you’d take it better comin’ from me, but Dean, you don’t gotta feel obligated to come back. He’ll be getting a military funeral. Don’t need you to do anythin’ you don’t wanna.”

A hero’s send off. How fucking inappropriate. For a minute Dean’s just quiet, brain numbed and stomach twisted in knots. “Have you told Sam?”

“Yeah,” Bobby sighs again and there’s a faint rasping sound, like he’s scratching his beard, “He says he ain’t comin’. Categorically refused, in fact.”

Dean knows without a doubt there’s no way he’s going either. He probably would’ve done if Sam had, just to be there for his brother, but there’s no misguided sense of loyalty tying him to Lawrence or his dad anymore. Still, “I don’t wanna put all this on you, Bobby,” he says, and Bobby scoffs in his ear.

“You’re not. Look, you got away. You’re out there having a great time with Cas and you can’t let this ruin that.”

“I’m relieved,” Dean whispers, a confession in the low light of the motel room, “It was worse not knowing where he was the past six months. I’d sorta assumed he’d kicked it anyway. God, I’m actually _relieved_ , Bobby.”

“So you oughta be. Son, you’re free now. That man who beat on you for kissin’ a boy when you were fifteen, that bastard who lowered your self-worth to the point where you thought you were no good for nothin’ but babysitting your kid brother? He’s gone.”

And it’s that, more than anything, that makes Dean’s throat close up. “Yeah,” he manages. The gurgle of the shower shutting off jars him into saying goodbye to Bobby, promising to take care of himself and Cas, and then Cas is coming out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his hips all flushed and damp and attractive.

“Hey,” he smiles, digging into his duffel for his sweats and tee and Dean smiles back, helpless.

“Hey.”

“You okay?” Cas’s eyes are on the phone in his fingers, the way his other hand is clenched in his jeans.

“Yeah, ‘course.” He forces his muscles to relax and smoothes out the fabric over his knee, “Wanna order takeout and watch Die Hard? Lemme just grab a shower.”

Except when he comes back into the room wearing his pajamas and smelling of cheap complimentary shower gel Cas is on the phone with Sam, expression grim and words a quiet rumble, and when he sees Dean he fixes him with this concerned look that promises he’s in trouble for not saying anything sooner. Shit.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Dean tells Cas as soon as he’s ended the call.

“Then we won’t talk about it,” Cas says easily. His hair is still wet, curling at the ends and darkening the collar of his t-shirt. “But the last time you said ‘I don’t wanna talk about it’ you ended up punching a hole in the drywall.”

“That was different,” Dean scowls. That was Aaron dumping Dean’s ass and Dean getting drunk and taking his teenage angst out the first thing his fist made contact with. This is... this is something else. Not nothing. Not worse, not better, just. Just, whatever. Different.

Cas is still looking at him carefully, like Dean’s a bomb about to explode, but he doesn’t know how to explain that he doesn’t feel anything except liberation and numbness. “Let’s just forget it about, Cas, please. It’s not like I haven’t spent the last half a year thinkin’ he was lying in a ditch somewhere anyway.”

“That doesn’t mean the reality of the situation is any easier to accept. Dean, don’t do anything stupid.”

Dean collapses onto the end of the bed and puts his head in his hands, pressing his palms into his eyes until multicolored stars bloom on his eyelids. “What makes you think I’m gonna do something stupid?”

Cas snorts. “Past experience.”

“Yeah, well... past experience your face,” Dean mutters, and okay so he’s not on top comeback form at the moment. So sue him. He sighs. “I won’t, Cas. ‘Sides, you’d stop me, right?”

“Oh no,” Cas says lightly, and he’s smiling when Dean looks up at him, “I think we both know I’d be right there beside you, and I don’t really want to have to pay bail for both of us.”

Jesus, Dean wants to spend the rest of his life with this dweeb. Like, for real.

“So, takeout,” Cas continues, “You wanna call the pizza place or shall I?”

Dean wrinkles his nose. “Make it Chinese. I gotta cravin’ for chow mein.”

They eat on the bed because it’s nearer the TV only the storm raging outside has knocked out nearly every channel except for the Travel Channel so they’re forced to watch a Baggage Battles marathon instead of Die Hard. And after they’ve eaten they crawl under the covers together like it ain’t no thing, and Dean burrows down comfortably because hey, why the hell not, it’s not like it’s the first time they’ve shared a bed. Cas gets the TV and the lights and then slides in behind Dean and there’s nothing but the soft hush of their breathing and the rumble of thunder outside, far far away from their little motel room.

Something makes Dean brave. He doesn’t know if it’s the heavy arm slung lazily over his waist or the drumming of the rain on the window or maybe he’s just, y’know, finally lost it. He whispers, “Sometimes I think you’re gonna, like, do something. But you never do.”

“Do what?”

“I dunno.” He does. He does know. “Maybe. Kiss me? Tell me stuff? Dunno.”

Cas huffs in an amused sort of way. “I was never sure if you—if you wanted...”

Which is the most ridiculous thing Dean’s ever heard. “Oh believe me, I want,” he says emphatically. Cas is smiling. Dean can’t see it in the dark with his back to him but he can feel it in the shape of Cas’s mouth when it presses a soft, dry kiss to the nape of his neck.

“Okay,” Cas says, low and easy, “That’s good to know. I’ll bear it in mind.”

It feels like a breakthrough.

 

-

 

The storm has broken the next morning leaving behind a clear blue sky and gentle rolling waves on the pale sand and soft birdsong that Dean finds Castiel sitting on the outside step listening to, like the nature-loving hippie that he is. Dean stands in the doorway behind him for a little while, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, looking out over the parking lot where the Impala sits gleaming in the low sun.

“You want a coffee?” he offers, and Cas does like this ridiculously _domestic_ thing where he leans into Dean’s legs and tips his head back to look up at him. His hair tickles Dean’s knees through his thin pajama pants.

“Please,” he smiles, then goes back to communing with the flora and the fauna or whatever the fuck he’s doing. Dean tries not to let it show on his face, just how happy and goddamn content he is. It’s not something he’s felt for a while and it makes all the shit with his dad feel manageable, something he can handle. Something he can move on from, maybe. He should call Sam before they head out, see how he’s doing. Probably even better than Dean.

He makes two cups of coffee at the kitchenette and wedges himself in next to Cas. “Beach day?” he asks.

Cas nods and his eyes are the same color as the sky. “Beach day.”

 

 

They drive twenty minutes until they find a deserted stretch of beach that they have to wade through waist-high grass to get through, stopping every ten seconds for Cas to take another photo. Dean suspects there are some of him in there but he pretends not to notice every time the camera lingers on him for just a couple of seconds too long.

On the sand Dean spreads out his jacket and sits with his arms hooked around his knees while Cas darts around picking up shells and weird bits of driftwood and staging them for pictures. The breeze ruffles his hair and his cheekbones are already a bit red from catching the sun. Dean has this stupid idea to wrap his arms around Cas’s waist and just grab him and pull him close.

“You look ridiculous,” Cas tells him, eyeing Dean’s two layers and thick denim judgmentally which is pretty rich coming from a guy wearing seersucker shorts and a tie dye tee he found in a Goodwill dollar bin when they made a supply pit stop back in Boise.

“You’ll excuse me if I don’t trust your fashion advice,” Dean snorts, but he compromises by toeing off his boots and socks.

It’s not long before Cas finally comes and sits beside him, flushed and smiling hard. “I love it here,” he says breathlessly, “Don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Dean nods, but he’s not looking at the landscape.

Cas smiles like he knows and grabs Dean’s hand, jumping to his feet and pulling Dean with him. “C’mon, Winchester, let’s paddle.”

Dean lets himself be dragged into the freezing cold surf but it’s not such a hardship really, not when Cas’s palm is warm and steady in his, guiding him and anchoring him to this moment, standing in the wide expanse of Pacific ocean with his best friend who he loves loves _loves_ and who’s looking at Dean like he hung the moon.

“I’m about to make out with you like it’s goin’ outta style,” Dean tells him, “You okay with that?”

“Yes,” Cas says without hesitation and this time Dean knows he’s smiling because he can feel it against his mouth.

 

-

 

They spend all day on the beach. Dean does, in fact, roll his jeans up. Like the reckless teenagers they aren’t anymore they drink beer and build sandcastles—or, in Dean’s case, a sand butt that Cas finds distinctly unfunny—and play chicken to see how deep they can get in the water before their feet go numb. There’s also a lot of kissing and getting used to being allowed to touch because as much as kissing Cas feels so fucking right, it takes a little while for Dean to acknowledge that this is a thing he can actually do now.

It’s not until the sun starts sinking below the horizon, painting the sky in pinks and oranges, that they finally agree to head back to the motel. It’s easy, the sexual tension between them. In a way that’s like, _yeah, okay, we’re gonna have sex soon but also we’re best friends and this is just another awesome thing we can do together_. There’s no urgency in their actions, just a bubbling eagerness that makes Dean laugh loudly and boisterously when they stop at a convenience store for food and a smirking Cas lines the bottom of the basket with condoms and lube.

“You’re hoping,” Dean retorts, but as he goes to pay he realizes that his own depraved and filthy mind is also hoping. Hoping for a lot of things. Maybe. If Cas wants to give them.

Back at their room Cas toes his shoes off just inside the door and flops into the center of the bed, slouching against the headboard looking for all the world like he’s about to watch TV or take a nap. Which Dean could almost believe if it weren’t for the way those blue eyes follow his every movement, laser-focused and burning with intent. Hooded, but not with exhaustion.

Dean drags it out for as long as he can, putting away the few groceries in the kitchenette and placing his own boots next to Cas’s sneakers and firing a quick text to Sam. He strips off his overshirt and hangs it neatly over the back of a chair. Then it’s just him. Standing in the middle of the room in his socks. Looking at Cas looking at him.

It’s Cas’s fingers clenching and unclenching that does it, that little show of barely held restraint, and Dean’s climbing across the mattress and crawling over to him, straddling him with a knee either side of his lap and touching his shoulders restlessly, impatiently.

“Cas,” he breathes and Cas surges forward and kisses him, far filthier and hotter than anything they’ve done yet, sucking on Dean’s lower lip and chasing after his tongue until Dean’s shaking all over, hard and straining in his pants.

There’s fabric in the way, too much, and Dean needs, he needs Cas’s shirt off needs skin—Jesus, he can’t even think, can’t breathe. His hands drag down Cas’s arms, bare and sun-kissed warm where his t-shirt stops. There’s strength in these arms, solidity, these arms have carried Dean’s drunk ass home and hugged him when he’s sad and when he’s happy.

He tangles their fingers together, palm to palm, moves Cas’s hands over his head and presses them into the pillow. Cas slides down until he’s horizontal, not once taking his mouth from Dean’s, and he groans when Dean bucks his hips.

“Dean, can I?” He sounds broken, breathless. One of his hands wriggles free and he drags his fingers down Dean’s spine over his t-shirt, a firm delicious friction that makes Dean shiver. God knows what he’s asking but the answer was only ever gonna be yes.

Dean reaches back and grabs that hand and pushes it lower until Cas’s fingers are caught on the back of his belt. “Yeah, yeah I want you to.”

Their clothes come off pretty quickly after that—except where they don’t because Dean’s got to kiss every new inch of Cas’s skin exposed to him, he’s _got to_ , gotta mark him up with hickeys, and that leads to taking Cas’s dick in his mouth until he’s trembling and pulling at Dean’s hair to bring him up for a sloppy kiss.

Dean noses into the hair behind Cas’s ear, gasps out, “Fuck me, Cas, c’mon. Please. Want you so bad,” and Cas rears up and grabs him, rolling them over until he’s pressing Dean down into the bedsprings, a heavy, reassuring weight.

Then it’s the stretch and burn of slick fingers, gentle but insistent, prodding him in just the right places to make his knees tremble, and Cas breathing hotly against his neck, his mouth, his chest, a faint scrape of teeth and stubble that’s gonna leave Dean red and raw and he fucking _loves_ it. He thinks about all the other places that mouth and tongue could be put to good use and quakes with it, keens and arches and palms Cas’s sweaty shoulder blades.

“Hey, hey, wait,” Cas pants, pulling back a few inches. His fingers still. He looks so delightfully debauched already. “Are you... I mean, do we need the condoms?” There’s a trace of embarrassment in his voice that makes Dean smirk.

“Are you saying you wanna do me bare?” he growls, and licks at the shell of Cas’s ear. Cas whimpers and nods, forehead falling to Dean’s shoulder. And Dean’s never been stupid about this, not since he caught chlamydia when he was 18, but this isn’t some random person in a bar, this is _Cas_.  

“I’m clean,” Cas tells him, eyes glazed but sincere, “I go to the clinic every three months and I haven’t slept with anyone since my last checkup.”

Dean knows this, in the same way he knows the ins and outs of Cas’s day-to-day routine and how he takes his coffee and still remembers his senior year class schedule. But he appreciates it being explicitly said, values the open honesty between them that’s never existed with anyone else but him.

“Me too, got tested after my last hookup.”

Those clever, clever fingers start moving again, circling and scissoring smoothly. “So you’re saying,” Cas puffs into the sweaty hollow of Dean’s neck, “that we—”

“Yeah, Cas,” Dean rumbles, “Fucking come in my ass.”

Every muscle in Cas’s body seems to shudder at that and he practically bites Dean’s mouth with the force of the next kiss, making Dean’s jaw ache in the best kind of way. He feels like he’s catching fire from the inside-out and groans appreciatively when Cas lifts his leg to hook it over his waist.

Cas pushes in mind-meltingly slowly, muttering Dean’s name over and over like a prayer and Dean digs his ankles into the small of Cas’s back, forcing him faster, but Cas always has been a stubborn bastard and he keeps the pace punishingly, desperately slow until Dean’s sobbing into his open mouth and comes in the hot space between them all over his stomach, his thighs shaking.

“Dean, Dean,” Cas groans, “You’re so beautiful, I’ve wanted— _loved_ —you for so... so long, I can’t. Oh god.”

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, because that sounds pretty familiar. He strokes Cas’s sweaty hair, combs it away from his forehead with his fingers, “Love you too.”

And damn it all to hell, that’s what does Cas in. Warmth pulses into Dean, Cas’s hips jerking erratically as he moans and kisses him. Dean wraps his arms around his neck and tugs him down, whispering soft words into his ear as they both try and catch their breath and who gives a fuck that they’re sticky and gross, Dean rolls them onto their side and smiles bigger than he has in forever, happy and sleepy and dumbstruck.

One of Cas’s fingers comes up to touch his cheekbone before brushing gently over his eyelashes. “Sleep, Dean,” he whispers, so Dean does.

 

 

When he wakes it’s the early hours of the morning and he’s warm and dry, Cas must have cleaned him up, and the guy in question is sitting at the wobbly little table eating cereal and watching The Discovery Channel on mute. The blue glow from the TV catches on the contours of his face, the line of his nose and the messy strands of his hair.

“Why are you eating Cheerios in the dark?” Dean croaks and he should probably be embarrassed by how fucked-out his voice sounds but on the other hand he just had the best orgasm of his life so whatever, he’d wear a t-shirt telling the world if such a thing existed.

Cas doesn’t even startle, just keeps crunching. “I was hungry. I didn’t want to wake you. Sorry if I did.”

“Nah, wasn’t you.” Dean doesn’t even know what woke him, just that he’d been dreaming about something vague and dark and uncomfortable. It must show on his face because Cas dumps his bowl in the sink and turns off the TV and climbs back into bed.

“What’s wrong?” he asks and wow, fuck him for knowing Dean better than anyone else, who said he could do that.

The thing is it’s just... it’s so much. In the space of two days Dean has lost his dad and gained the goddamn love of his life. He starts crying. He doesn’t even know why, really, but suddenly his pillow is damp and his face is aching hot.

“Hey.” Cas thumbs away the tears, and Dean wants to hide from him but can’t, there’s no space to breathe and he can’t pull away from Cas’s gaze any more than the tide can resist the moon. “You have all this freedom now. You can do anything you want to.”

“This _freedom_ terrifies me, Cas. Being stuck in Lawrence with my dad terrified me too, but in a reliable sort of way that I could deal with. This... Jesus, I don’t know what to do or where I’m going.”

“Since when do you get scared? Dean, you’re fearless. I’ve always been so envious of that. You’re the first one to jump, head first and blindfolded.”

Dean snorts because yeah, right. “I’m not fearless. I’m scared all the fuckin’ time, I’m just real good at pretending I’m not.”

“Are you scared of me?” Cas bites his lip and despite everything Dean smiles.

“No. If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s you. Nothing feels righter than this, man. My hands on you, my mouth... Feels good.” His cheeks burn as he says it, and Cas laughs in the back of his throat and kisses him, soft and sweet and lush.

“Get some sleep, stud,” he whispers, and the pet name is dumb but Dean wants to hear it over and over again. “Everything will be better in the morning.”

And maybe it will. Or maybe it won’t. Maybe they’ll find a shitty little apartment they can make their own or maybe they’ll stay on the road for the rest of their lives. Maybe they won’t work or maybe. Y’know. Maybe they will. Maybe they’ll climb mountains. That would be cool. Maybe they’ll adopt a couple of kids and a dog. They’ll probably hold hands a lot and make out even more. Dean likes that idea. Likes it so much.

“Yeah,” he agrees, tucking his head under Cas’s chin, and he falls asleep, warm and content, between one breath and the next.

 

 

 


End file.
